Early last evening, for reasons that I don’t recall, I had CNN on. As is the network’s wont, the anchor-person was tediously touting CNN’s allegedly extraordinary abilities to cover the Israel-Hezbollah war. CNN’s long-standing conceit is that while Fox gets better ratings, for hard news there is no place else to go but CNN.

Part of CNN’s coverage of the war includes reliance on the local networks of the region. CNN monitors these networks; when they have images of sufficient newsworthiness, CNN passes these images along on a real-time basis. Among the networks CNN relies on for its unique brand of hard news is the Al-Manar network, the network owned and operated by Hezbollah.

In other words, the credulous news gatherers at CNN deem Hezbollah a sufficiently reliable news provider to pass on the organization’s “coverage